5 Halloween activities for adults

These Halloween activities for adults solve being too old to trick-or-treat

Your pain is real, and many young adults and no-longer-young adults feel it nationwide, thankfully we have these 5 Halloween activities for adults. You’re not alone in feeling the pit of emptiness taking the place in your stomach where once the excitement of trick-or-treating thrived. You’re not alone in jealously watching children stroll from door to door, blissfully unaware that their trick-or-treating days will one day be over. You might not be alone, but it might be time to move on. The realm of Halloween activities does not close its doors to you entirely once you leave middle school (or for some, high school). Instead, relish in the delights that these five Halloween activities for adults have in store for you. The day has come to throw off your mantle of melancholy during the October season and celebrate your more seasoned and mature age.

Remember when you weren’t even allowed to hold a carving knife? Now’s the time to really get into the Halloween spirit with pumpkin carving as a main Halloween activity for adults. Your hands may have greedily clutched free candy once, but those hands were also tiny and frail. Today you have adult hands, and you might amaze yourself at what you can craft when you really put your mind to it and get sawing. Make the whole pumpkin adventure an event and take a crew of friends and family out to a farm to pick out the gnarliest pumpkins to make into gloriously hideous sculptures.

2. Horror Movie Night

Duh. You couldn’t watch these types of movies as a child without having traumatic dreams for the rest of your life- at least, most of us couldn’t. Save up a playlist of movies that you’ve been waiting to watch, and invite a group of scare-hungry friends over to gnosh on snacks and be willingly terrified. Rotten Tomatoes is an excellent place to start on your scary movie hunt, and make sure that you’ve picked movies that will genuinely be horrific. Second-rate horror movies on Halloween? No, thanks. If you’re going to commit to a marathon of awful cinematic scenes, they’ve at least got to be of high quality gore and terror.

3. DIY Haunted House

Maybe you’re a little more than jealous. Maybe you’re a little angry. Maybe even a little… scary. If you live in an area where you might have trick-or-treaters, feed that rage into a creative outlet like designing your own haunted house. Even if you don’t have kids in your neighborhood, you could still design a scare-tastic adventure and then invite your friends over to horrify them to death. Not literally.

4. Turn Halloween into Thanksgiving

You heard me. Everyone knows why Thanksgiving is so great, right? Food, food, and more food (and pilgrims). Halloween is known for its candy and gruesome treats, but it’s not necessarily known for being a time where you produce gigantic meals and then gorge yourself to the point of being sleepy and swollen. Why should Thanksgiving get all the credit for being a belly-filling festival? Turn your Halloween into a potluck with your friends and family by cooking up treats, appetizers, dinners, and desserts that are spooky-themed which can end up being a Halloween activity within itself. And then eat all of it. In one night. You’re welcome.

5. Embrace Nature’s Natural Terror

If you have a safe area in which to do so, go for a midnight hike outdoors. Equip yourself and some friends with headlamps, flashlights, and maybe even a candle or two to keep yourselves relatively-well illuminated. Even the most harmless hike can turn into a terrifying affair when the moon, instead of the sun, runs the show. Make sure to do this somewhere that you or a friend is already familiar with to avoid any accidental injuries- and bonus points for convincing that friend to act as a less-than-friendly intruder on the hike.

6. Backsliding

You thought there were only five options? Well, you and I both know that there are really six. And you and I both know that six can only be: going trick-or-treating. No judgement. No matter what you do, you’ll have an excellent Halloween as long as you remain positive, and yes, realistic, about your age. Maybe trick-or-treating can be a Halloween activity for adults.